


Nor Hell A Fury

by Lucy Gillam (cereta)



Category: Stephen King's Christine, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-29
Updated: 2009-03-29
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereta/pseuds/Lucy%20Gillam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mysterious stranger, a pissed off car, and a twenty year quest for revenge. Just another week for Sam and Dean Winchester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sam: MidWest Bar Stories

**Author's Note:**

> A whoooole lotta people contributed to getting this story done. Thanks to amberlynne, lydiabell, and falzalot for read throughs, mirandir for some timely reminders, and way2busymom for beta. As always, the incomparable elynross made this better. Lots and lots better.
> 
> Those familiar with the Western Hills area of Cincinnati might notice a little geographical fudging. The restaurant with the giant chicken on the top is real, by the way. So is Devil's Backbone Road, and I might have chosen Cincinnati just so I could work that in ;). Maybe.

Sam didn't know what started the fight in the Knotty Pine pub -- probably a pool hustle gone bad. It was a surprise Dean didn't get into more fights that way; he was good, really good, but the "suck until they're suckered" ploy was so clichéd, Sam never stopped being amazed at how often it worked.

But whatever provoked this particular fight, the real reason was always the same: Dean was spoiling for a fight. Even before…things, Dean hadn't handled inactivity very well. He'd done okay as a kid, when "inactivity" mostly meant "look after Sam," but once he started hunting, man, give him a week between bad things to kill and he started getting antsy. Sometimes Sam thought Dad had taught Dean to fix cars less for the free labor than to give him something to do between hunts.

It had been nearly two weeks since they'd saved Evan Hudson from the hell hounds. The suspicious accident they'd come to Cincinnati to investigate looked like a routine hit-and-run, a health insurance agent killed by a customer whose claims had been denied one too many times, and they hadn't picked up anything since. And if Cincinnati wasn't the worst place in the world to find themselves at loose ends, it wasn't exactly the best, either.

This was all why, despite the beer bottle flying past his head and the man trying very earnestly to bash his skull in, Sam just couldn't seem to take this fight seriously. He knew this was a mistake: every instinct he had was screaming at him that just because the fight was stupid it didn't mean he couldn't get hurt, and he really needed to shift out of autopilot, here. But his focus just wouldn't snap into place, so he kept on the edge, blocking blows, even landing a few, but not really engaging.

Right up until the dull shine of a knife caught his eye a few seconds too late to dodge.

He managed to turn, hoping it would at least miss anything vital, and braced himself for the pain. Instead, he heard the dull smack of skin hitting skin and looked down to see someone holding back the hand holding the knife. He had a vague impression of graying hair and a tired face before the two men merged into the general chaos of the fight.

Sam shook his head and searched the crowd for Dean. Catching sight of him slamming a large man in flannel against the wall, Sam set his shoulders and began cutting a path to him. He'd learned by sixteen that it wasn't _that_ hard to navigate through a bar fight, as long as you knew when to duck and weren't afraid of a few bruises.

"Dean!" Sam wasn't surprised when his brother ignored him, so he grabbed Dean's shoulder and ducked the instinctive punch. "Let's go!"

For a minute, Dean looked like he was going to argue, then his face took on the unmistakable look of someone seeing something bad over another person's shoulder, and he pulled Sam off to one side just in time to avoid a chair wielded with great force.

"Right," Dean said, pausing only to deliver a well-aimed kick to the chair-wielder's gut. "Leaving. Good plan."

The parking lot was filling up as people left the chaos for someplace they could actually get a drink, but fortunately there was no sign of the guys who had decided that Dean was a cheat. The Impala was waiting for them, fit as she had ever been; more so, perhaps, after the weeks of patient care Dean had put into restoring her. Sam's path to the passenger seat was blocked by an older man walking towards his own car, and Sam waited with some impatience until he recognized the man who'd blocked the knife.

"Hey!" he said, "thanks for the help in there."

The older man smiled in a way that reminded Sam of Dean's recent expressions. "I have a thing about people who bring knives to fistfights." He was about Dad's age, give or take. He had the same tired expression that made age hard to gauge, and the few steps he'd taken toward his car betrayed a slight limp. He got into an SUV that was just this side of a tank, gave a friendly nod, and drove off.

"Did you make a new friend?" Dean asked, pausing to wipe blood from a split lip.

"Nah, he just…" Sam paused, because 'stopped me from being stabbed' didn't sound like words that should come after 'just.' "Helped out."

"Cool. We should blow before Mutt and Jeff get out here." Dean opened the car door. "There's no job here."

~~~

"There might be a job here."

Sam managed to stifle a groan as he rolled over. It frequently struck him as unfair that Dean, never an early riser on average days, seemed to wake up in a fine and energetic mood the day after having the shit kicked out of him, by forces human or otherwise. It was especially unfair for this to happen on a morning when Sam was himself stiff with bruises from a fight Dean had started.

"Say again?"

"There was another hit and run last night, same MO. Guy was run over and left as street pizza."

"It's a big city, Dean, lots of people," Sam replied into his pillow. He wasn't really invested in playing the skeptic; two people run down in less than a week probably was a pattern, if not necessarily a supernatural one. But if it got him ten more seconds of keeping his eyes closed, he'd make the case.

"Yeah, except," Dean continued unfazed, "two separate witnesses swear that no one was actually driving the car."

That got Sam to sit up.

"And before you ask, neither of them were obviously drunk or high, and according to the _Cincinnati Enquirer_," Dean held up the paper as if to verify that yes, that was in fact the name of the paper, "one of them is a scientist for Proctor &amp; Gamble. Not that scientists can't have wacky ideas, I guess. You remember that guy in Boston, wanted to channel demonic energy to power his whatchamacallit, that--"

"Dean!" Sam interrupted, and only partly because yes, he remembered, "Car. No driver."

"Right. So, Steve Dunbar, age forty-seven, mild-mannered accountant, got run down last night on Devil's Backbone Road." Sam's eyebrows must have gone up, because Dean added, "Swear to God, not making that up. Anyway, right there in the suburb, guy was run down crossing the street after going to a neighbor's to return a pair of hedge clippers. Neighbor heard the engine and a scream, and looked out her window just in time to see," Dean looked at the paper again, "a really big red and white car with no visible driver backing up over Dunbar. The car ran over him _again_, and sped off."

Sam took the paper and skimmed the article. A second witness, who apparently preferred to remain anonymous, which, really, who could blame him, also reported seeing a "vintage" red and white car with no visible driver run over Dunbar not once, but three times. The paper played up the driver aspect while being circumspect about the rest, including the usual "police are investigating" line.

"Any reason to think the two cases are connected?"

"Other than the coincidence of two guys getting pulped into the pavement in four days in the same city?" Dean asked. "Not yet. But we're here anyway, and it's probably worth at least checking out."

Sam nodded. No wonder Dean was in a good mood. It was time to get to work.

~~~

"I didn't say the car had no driver, " Harry Schaeffer said for the third time in about five minutes. "I just said I didn't _see_ one." It seemed very important to him that Federal Mutual Life Insurance understand this, which, Sam supposed, made sense from a man who was probably only about thirty-five and already wore cardigans.

Sam and Dean had already talked to the witness named in the newspaper, who hadn't had much to say beyond what was reported. What she _had_ provided was the name of the anonymous witness.

"Yes, sir, we understand that," Sam replied patiently, "but if we could get back to the car. You were the one who described it as vintage, right?"

Schaeffer rolled his eyes. "The Enquirer described it as vintage. I swear, I don't know where we'll turn for decent reporting once the Post closes its doors. _I_ said it was a Plymouth Fury, looked like a '58 except the colors were wrong."

Sam blinked, less because of the unexpected detail than because it was coming from a guy who looked like Mister Rogers. Most of the guys he'd met who knew about cars looked more like, well, Dad. Or Dean.

He looked over at Dean, who was just out of Schaeffer's line of sight. Dean gave a small what-the-hell shrug and said, "Wrong in what way?"

Schaeffer looked at the bookshelves lining one wall with the unmistakable expression of someone searching for a book to support what they're about to say. It was an expression Sam had seen on countless college professors.

"The car was white and red. I couldn't vouch for the exact shade with the light being so dim, but I'd bet anything it was Autumn Red. The Fury didn't come in those colors until '59, but the lines of the car seemed more like a '58." Schaeffer seemed to find the book he was looking for, and leaned over to grab it. "Here, I can show you--"

"No, no," Dean interrupted. "We believe you." Schaeffer looked almost offended by this. "I mean," Dean added, "you obviously know what you're talking about."

That seemed to mollify him, and he continued, "Anyway, the car does have big front seats, so I suppose it's possible someone could have been ducked down there."

"Any chance it was being controlled remotely?" Sam asked.

Schaeffer snorted. "Down this street? Good luck. Part of what makes this area so appealing is that cars can only go so fast." He frowned. "Which, now that I think of it, the Fury shouldn't have been able to go as fast as it did. It wasn't even skidding. It shouldn't have that kind of torque." Now he did reach for a book and began thumbing through it.

Sam recognized a lost cause when he saw one. Apparently so did Dean, because he began making his standard exit comments.

"So, we're looking for a '58 Plymouth Fury with '59 colors," Sam said as they reached the Impala.

"I guess so," Dean replied. "Assuming Harold in there knows his shit, and anyone with that many books on classic cars probably knows his shit, although I'll eat my ratchet set if he's ever had his hands in an actual car in his life." Dean paused and looked up and down the street, at least the small portion that was visible before curves and hills obscured it. "You think you could drive this street ducked down out of sight?"

Sam looked at the hairpin turn five houses away. "Not really, no."

"Yeah, me, neither." Dean opened his car door. "Definitely a job here."

~~~

Sam hadn't realized just how much they'd come to rely on a charming smile to get information until they met Steve Dunbar's partner. Emily Grice was at most Dean's age, but everything about her demeanor made it quite clear who was in charge in this situation, and it sure wasn't Sam and Dean.

"Did you say you were from the FBI branch here in Cincinnati?" she asked in the middle of Dean's question about whether Dunbar had any enemies. It was the fourth time she had implicitly questioned their authenticity, beginning with the expected "Why is the FBI investigating a hit and run?" and ending with a complicated query about their tax work. Sam remembered just enough from his accounting classes to give a vague answer.

"Actually, we're from Columbus," Dean said, "And that's really all I can say," he added, cutting off the next question. "Ongoing investigation, I'm sure you understand."

"Oh. Well, no, Steve didn't have any enemies that I knew of. I mean," Emily said, tapping short but carefully manicured nails against her desk, "there's always someone who's sure you didn't get them the tax outcome they deserved, and Steve's done a few audits that brought some minor infractions to light, but nothing serious, and nothing recent. He was just telling me Friday that the people at Vital were going to be happy with the results." She looked a little wistful. "Said it was nice to give people good news for a change. Steve always loved the investigative part of audits, but he hated getting people in trouble."

Vital. Sam frowned. "Excuse me, was that Vital Health Insurance?" He shot Dean a look, and Dean returned it with a "Yeah, caught it, too" nod.

"Yes. Steve was performing an independent audit. There was some suspicion of embezzling, but it turned out to be a mistake. A fairly massive mistake, but no one person was actually at fault. In fact, everyone appeared to be very honest and above-board about the whole thing." She sighed. "It really made Steve happy."

Dean leaned forward in what Sam had come to recognize as his down-to-business pose. "You didn't happen to notice any cars around recently that … stood out?"

Emily frowned. "You mean other than the ones from the classic car thing at the Convention Center? Can't say that I have."

Sam managed to avoid rolling his eyes, but it was a near thing.

"Could be worse," Dean said in the Impala as he loosened his tie. "It could be a Plymouth Fury convention."

"Yeah, but did you catch that about Vital?"

Dean nodded. "Same company as the first victim."

"Didn't the police arrest someone for that?" Which, of course, wasn't exactly uncommon in supernatural situations. Once, in an introductory criminal justice course, Sam had caught himself wondering how many people were sitting in prison for crimes committed by a demon or Wendigo or other supernatural thing. He was halfway into a plan for a law practice before he reminded himself that he was done with that sort of thing.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Dean said.

The engine rumble that came at the end of Dean's sentence was so like the Impala's that Sam almost missed that Dean was just putting the keys in the ignition. If he hadn't noticed _that_, he probably also would have missed the flash of red and white turning a corner at the very edge of his vision.

Huh.

~~~

During his time in college, Sam realized that he was aware of certain cultural shifts that other kids his age weren't. At eighteen, most of his classmates pretty much thought that the way things were now was the way they always had been; they had no real knowledge of a time before cable, and not much of a time before the internet.

But what he really had perspective on was just how much the American landscape had changed over the years, and in particular, how small local businesses had given way more and more to chains. Most of the places the Winchesters stayed were small, roadside motels with maybe twenty rooms. The first time Dad checked them into a Comfort Inn, he and Dean had both spent several hours sitting carefully on the beds so as not to disturb the artfully arranged covers. Restaurants, too, were more often chain than the Mom's Diners John had favored (although he'd pretty much relied on Pizza Hut wherever they went). And if Sam admitted to liking the predictability of an Outback steak, Dean seemed to hold it as a point of pride that he'd never eaten in a T.G.I. Friday's in his life.

Which was how they ended up some place with a giant chicken on the roof. In fairness, the fried chicken was pretty good.

They ate at their usual dinner time of ninish, which was pretty common in big cities and small diners, but apparently not so much in the suburbs of Cincinnati. As a result, the parking lot was nearly deserted by the time they came out of the restaurant, the Impala sitting in solitary splendor.

"So, if this car, or whoever's using the car, is targeting Vital Health Insurance somehow," Dean said, "we could try staking out the building, see if the car shows up, or maybe…"

Dean's next words were lost under the deep rumble of an engine.

"Um, Dean?" Sam stopped walking and gripped the arm of Dean's jacket to make him do the same. "I don't think that's going to be necessary."

The headlights blinded them as a car that seemed too large to have hidden among the employee cars at the back of the lot moved a few yards toward them and sat there, idling. Through the glare of the headlights, Sam could just make out red and white metal.

An idling car shouldn't have sounded quite that threatening.

Sam ran through the available options in a matter of seconds. They could go back inside, but that would only delay things, and besides, it was nearly closing time, which meant more people coming out with them and possible collateral damage. They could try to find a place in nearby buildings that the car couldn't get to, but same problem, not to mention the relative odds of outrunning the car in the first place. Or they could try to get to their own car and get it moving.

All of this got conveyed to Dean as, "Car?"

"Car."

Over the years, they'd gotten pretty good at getting into cars quickly, and Dean had apparently improved during Sam's absence because he had the engine going by the time Sam had opened his door. Whether it was going to be fast enough to avoid getting pinned in by the oncoming car was another question.

"Hang on!" Dean yelled, and Sam braced himself as the Impala lurched backwards, barely clearing the parking lot divider to crash over a bush and out onto the street. Sam hardly registered the honking horns as Dean straightened out and took off north, away from the nearby shopping Mecca.

Judging from the continued honking, the Fury wasn't far behind, and sure enough, the Impala's rear view mirrors began reflecting the overpowering headlights.

"Okay, this could be a problem," Dean muttered. "Don't suppose you know of any burned down churches nearby?"

"Haven't had time to check," Sam said, wincing as Dean blew through a red light.

"Great. If you get any bright ideas in, oh, the next few seconds, be sure to let me," Dean cringed as a sudden hill caused the Impala to briefly leave the ground, "know."

The road took a long dive, and if that gave them some speed, it seemed to give the Fury more, its bumper knocking against them more than once. They picked up a few yards of distance just in time for the road to curve and head back up.

"This town really doesn't believe in grids, does it?" Dean said, yanking the wheel just in time to scrape against a barrier.

The Fury didn't even skid.

"Oh, that is so not fair," Dean said.

Still, they managed to pull ahead a bit, which would have been great if the street wasn't dead ending. Into another road, granted, but the intersection looked unforgiving of speed, particularly since the ground beyond it appeared to drop off.

"Dean," Sam warned.

"I see it. Not sure what I'm going to _do_, but I see it." He took a deep breath. "Okay, baby, don't let me down, here."

They took the turn without slowing down, and the Impala skidded off the road and down a short hill. Dean gunned the engine, but the damp grass wasn't exactly helping.

"Dean!" Sam held a hand up against the glare of the oncoming lights.

"Working on it." The tires continued to struggle for purchase.

The headlights were only feet away, and Sam instinctively turned away from the inevitable crash. He was so braced for it that as the shriek and crunch of metal hitting metal and giving way hit his ears, it took him nearly five seconds to realize they hadn't been hit.

He opened his eyes to see a huge SUV sitting in the intersection. The Fury was several feet away at an angle that, along with the crushed side, clearly indicated a crash. The SUV was just sitting there, no frantic owner getting out to see if everyone was okay, no backing up. Instead, it looked for all the world as if the two vehicles were staring each other down.

After a very long minute, the Fury backed into a nearby driveway, and pulled out heading in the opposite direction, the squeal of its tires seeming to say that this wasn't over. Sam heard rather than saw the passenger side door of the SUV open, and the driver came around the front into their field of vision. Sam was only mildly surprised to see the man who had saved him at the bar.

"You guys okay?" the man asked.

"Been worse," Dean answered. "Been better. Thanks for the save, there."

Porch lights began to go on in the houses set back on the road.

"We should probably get out of here," the man said. He gave them a long look. "And we should probably talk." He started to walk to the rear of the Impala, obviously intending to help push it, then stopped. "By the way," he added, "my name's Dennis Guilder."


	2. Dennis: MidWest Car Stories

I'd heard of John Winchester, of course. His name had floated bv more than once in the fifteen years since I first stumbled across people who called themselves hunters. I'm not a hunter, by the way; at least, I don't consider myself one, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't consider me one, either. Oh, I have the required Tragic Encounter With Evil in my past, but I've never expanded my repertoire. Really, it's shocked more than one hunter that I'm pretty content to leave your average vampire or Wendigo alone unless violence becomes absolutely necessary. Then again, I have a more specific target than most hunters. I suppose if my best friend had been killed by a random demon instead of an evil '58 Fury's likewise evil owner, I'd be cutting a wider swath, too.

But yeah, I'd heard of John Winchester. He'd been mentioned to me as a guy who not only knew his shit when it came to supernatural evil, but who also knew cars. He was supposed to be a pretty tough son of a bitch. I never managed to connect with him, though. Hadn't heard he was dead. Hadn't heard he had kids, either, although I suppose kids aren't the kind of thing hunters talk about unless said kids have been killed by vengeful ghosts or something.

So I was fully prepared to believe that the two boys sitting on the other bed in my room at the Tumble Inn were who they said they were. Although when I started thinking of guys in their twenties as boys is beyond me. It did occur to me that these two must've barely been crapping their diapers, if that, when I sat outside the Rainbow Motel with George LeBay, listening to the story of his wretched older brother and that damned car, the car that was ruining Arnie Cunnigham's life, the car that was the one thing I couldn't seem to save him from.

Which, hell, still made them older than I'd been when I first faced Christine.

"So, the car itself is haunted?" Dean asked. "Not a ghost car, but a haunted car." He wasn't exactly incredulous. In fact, he had the tone of someone who was finding something really cool and knew he shouldn't be. They'd sat through my story about the junk car my best friend fell in love with, the son of a bitch who'd haunted it, the people who'd died.

They weren't even remotely fazed.

"Sort of," I said. "It's more complicated than that."

"Of course it is," Sam said. "Because someone must've suggested you…"

"Salt and burn Roland LeBay's bones," I interrupted. "Yeah. Did that in '92."

"You're sure it's the same car you crushed, not, like, a ghost of it or anything?" Dean asked. I sensed a story there, but wasn't going to ask.

I shook my head. "I've seen be destroyed and…reconstitute. Also, as far as I can tell, it doesn't have the ability to appear and disappear like a ghost would."

"Still, have you tried--" Sam started.

"I've gotten it on hallowed ground," I interrupted again. He made a face, but I'd had this conversation more than once. "It's the same car. It's not haunted anymore, or a ghost itself. It's something about _the car_. Either it's keeping some…remnant of the spirits that've inhabited it--"

"Doesn't work like that." Dean returned the interruption favor. "Spirit's gone, it's gone, otherwise we'd never finish a job."

"Or," I continued, "it was something about the car in the first place, something LeBay just latched onto."

"Wait, back up," Sam said. "Spirits? Plural?"

I was wondering if one of them would catch that. "I don't actually think there've been any others like LeBay," I admitted. "But she does seem to…retain something from anyone who owns her, and she's had new owners since Arnie. As near as I can figure, she just kind of plants herself in an obviously sleazy used car lot, and when she gets sold, the owner just puts it down to bad bookkeeping and pockets the money."

"How many?" Dean asked.

"Two that I know of. Adam Barber in Tulsa and Connie Nunn in Chicago." Actually, it had been Connie that convinced me that LeBay was well and truly gone. Despite his professed admiration for the aroma of female genitalia, I was pretty sure he wouldn't have picked a teenage lesbian for his avatar. "Mostly she seems to work on her own now, but it's like she periodically needs someone to…I don't know, recharge her."

"So, what does she keep of them if it's not their ghosts?" Sam had an expression I remembered on my best students, that look that said he was still gathering information before coming to a conclusion and formulating a plan.

Dean, on the other hand, looked like every other hunter I'd met, like he was already running through ways to kill something.

"Their grudges," I answered. "Again, as near as I can tell, that's how she picks who to kill. She seems to be just killing for the joy of it now, or maybe out of habit, or because she can't figure out what else to do with her time. But the victims she picks are always of a type her various owners hated. In North Carolina, it was military officers, the kind LeBay despised. Last year in Scottsdale, it was cheerleaders. I'm pretty sure that was Connie Nunn. In Lincoln…"

I stopped short. I hadn't meant to bring up Lincoln. That one might have been the hardest, not counting the people I actually knew. Christine had killed four university professors in a spree that remained unsolved, but which had been attributed to an unknown disgruntled student. I wanted to believe it was LeBay's disdain for college types she was reflecting; it wasn't personal, the way his hatred of military officers was, but it was real. I wanted so _badly_ to believe that.

Except the professors she killed had all been from either the English or History departments, all around the same age that Arnie's parents had been when Christine first came into his life. Ah, God, Arnie, what happened to you?

I shook my head. "Anyway, Adam Barber spent three years trying to get his health insurance to pay for a liver transplant. He was dying when he bought Christine, and if he hadn't been killed by a police officer when he was trying to run down a doctor, he would have died in a few months anyway."

"And that's why…Christine...is going after health insurance types." Dean made a face as if he felt silly calling her that. I knew the feeling, but after twenty-nine years you can get used to anything.

"That would be my guess," I said, well aware even before their exchange of looks that I'd been saying that or its equivalent a lot in this conversation "There's a bunch I can't explain: fishermen in Maine, Pakistani immigrants in St. Louis… Look," I said, "what I don't know could fill a library, but I still know more than any person alive." Which was maybe not to best phrasing, but it was accurate.

They looked at each other again, and it may have been a long time since I was that close to anyone, but I knew silent communication when I saw it. "What?"

"It sounds like a demon," Sam said with the air of someone expecting to be disbelieved. As if I'd balk at the idea that the evil car I'd been chasing for over two decades was possessed by a demon.

"I doubt it," I said. "I've tried the standard exorcism ritual; rather, this guy in Seattle did. Nothing happened."

"Do you remember what he did?" Dean asked.

I shrugged. "Holy water, some Latin. I don't remember the exact words. I was a little dazed at the time, given that I'd just thrown a Molotov cocktail into a moving car." I'd even used tampons for the wicks. I hoped Leigh knew that. I like to think it would have pleased her, having her idea used after all.

They looked at each other again, and I got the feeling I was going to get really tired of that by the time this was all over. Not that I was even thinking of it being all over, but if history were any indication, we'd be parting ways soon enough anyway.

"Did you use a Devil's Trap?" Sam asked.

"A what?"

Dean nodded, as if I'd just confirmed what he already suspected. "Well, that answers that. If you didn't use a Devil's Trap, the demon might not have been in the car when you did the ritual. They can move in and out of things. Never heard of one moving in and out of a car, but hey."

I was silent for a long moment, almost not daring to ask the obvious question. "So…if we use one of these Devil's Traps, and do an exorcism then, it should destroy her?"

"Should," Sam answered.

I nodded, thinking furiously. It had been so long since I'd had any hope of doing more than just stopping Christine in the immediate situation, keeping her from killing maybe one person, maybe dying in the attempt. I wasn't sure I even knew how to think beyond that anymore.

"You guys can help me?" I finally asked.

"Why not?" Dean said. "We've had weirder. You should ask Sam, here, about the killer clown."

Sam shot his brother a glare I knew well, and I felt my throat tighten. I'd pretty much reconciled myself to Leigh's death, if not quite my own failure to prevent it. George LeBay, who'd lived not far from here, in fact, I'd never stood a chance of saving. But if I lived to be a hundred, which I sometimes think will be the perfect punishment for my failures, I will never, ever get over watching my parents identify Ellie's body a week after her graduation from Penn State. Christine never came after my parents; it's like she knew she didn't have to. It took my father a year to die, and while my mother was still living in Florida, safely on the boat my father could never afford in life but had paid for in death, it didn't matter. Christine as good as killed them the day she ran a red light to send my sister into the air and down to her death.

"Any chance she'll just take off, now that she knows you're here?" From a normal person, I'd have taken that as hope; from Dean, it sounded like worry.

I shook my head. "Just the opposite. She'll stick around. She might even step up the killing, just to taunt me."

"You think she'll stick to the pattern, keep going after insurance agents?"

"I honestly don't know. Maybe. The cops have probably made the connection by now, and they know what car to look for, but she's gotten pretty good at evading them over the years."

"The classic car convention in town probably won't help, there," Sam pointed out.

I hadn't actually known about that, but it didn't surprise me. "I suppose it depends on how much control she has over the rage she absorbs from her owners. Or how much she wants me to find her."

Another exchange of looks told me that "use the old guy as bait" had already occurred to both of them. Not that I had any objections.

"Okay," Sam said. "So, the first thing we should probably do is find a place we can make a Devil's Trap, and then figure out how we're going to get her there."

Dean nodded. "Piece of cake."

~~~

I was a little surprised at how complicated it was; I'd figured we could just use a back road until Sam had pointed out that if we drew the symbol on the ground, we risked the car's tires messing up the writing and breaking the trap.

On the plus side, Cincinnati's hilly geography made for lots of underpasses that could be used for the trap itself. On the other hand, the area was pretty well suburbanized. Surprisingly, it's difficult to find locations where one can trap a demonic car with a complicated symbol and keep it there for long enough to perform an exorcism without random people stopping by. Finding a back road with an overpass that no one was likely to drive down, even in the middle of the night, took some doing.

Which was how I ended up in a car with Dean Winchester, watching traffic patterns on a lonely road at two a.m., drinking bad coffee in awkward silence.

I stretched my leg as best as I could in the cramped seat. My already bum leg had taken a few more hits over the years, and it never seemed to lose its stiffness anymore.

"If you don't mind my asking," I said, almost wincing at my own lameness, "how did your father die?" Okay, so maybe bringing up such a serious subject wasn't the best tactic, but what else was I supposed to ask about? I had a feeling he hadn't been following the Phillies that year. Or any year.

It looked like I was going to get the answer I deserved, namely, none; Dean's face shut down completely, and he took a long swallow of his coffee. But after a long moment, he finally said, with as little inflection as possible, "Demon."

"Ah." I figured I probably wouldn't get more than that. "Well, I was sorry to hear about it."

"Yeah. So let me ask you something," Dean said, with the definite tone of someone going on the offensive to avoid an uncomfortable subject. "The Key of Solomon isn't as common knowledge as, I dunno, salt or anything, but it's not like it's a secret known only to some cult in Buttfuck, Nevada, either. All these years, no other hunter suggested it to you?"

"Honestly, I didn't really ask," I admitted. "I just assumed that the fact that the ritual failed meant it wasn't a demon."

"No one else ever asked you about it, though?"

"Most of the time, when I've run into other hunters, they were going full-tilt after something else," I said. "Either they mistook Christine for some demon or other they were chasing, or I mistook their…whatever's work for Christine, but either way, they're usually in hot pursuit. And most of the time, they're not all that inclined to interrupt that pursuit to help me." That I wasn't usually all that inclined to stop and help _them_ didn't need dwelling on. "And the few times they have been…" I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to figure out how to put this in a way that wouldn't end in violence. "They were… They seemed kind of…" Oh, yeah, I was doing a _great_ job at this.

Dean snorted. "Yeah, I get it. Hunters are…" For moment, he didn't seem to know what to say, either, then he continued, looking straight ahead. "I was gonna say that hunting evil's not exactly the kind of thing nice, normal people do, but I'm pretty sure my Dad was a nice, normal guy before…" Dean paused in a way I'd seen other hunters do, a way that meant he was trying not to talk about whatever had gotten him into this gig. "I mean, sure, ex-Marine, but still, pretty normal. But I'm guessing 'nice and normal' isn't how most people would have described him once he started hunting." He let out a little chuff of air. "Badass, but not nice and normal. So I get it. Hunters can be scary."

Which was great, but didn't change the fact that if I hadn't been so wary, Christine might have been defeated years ago, and more than a few people might still be alive who weren't. Just one more on a long list of things I would have to live with.

Dean looked at his watch. "Midnight to three a.m., no cars. I'd say we should watch another night just to be safe, but…"

"But we probably don't have that kind of time," I finished. "Either she's going to kill someone else, or she's going to leave. And if she leaves, the odds of finding her any time soon aren't good. It's easier than it used to be, with the internet, but it's hit or miss."

Dean nodded. "Tomorrow night it is." He turned to look at me. "Ready to be bait?"

~~~

Getting Christine's attention wasn't as easy as it had been all those years ago in Libertyville, but I was pretty sure that once I _did_, she'd follow me. She might or might not have gotten smarter over the years, if only to keep up with the world, but she was still basically emotion-driven, and I was her biggest sore spot, the one person she'd failed to kill. She'd hurt me, but I was still here, still after her. I was pretty sure she couldn't resist an opportunity to come after me.

The key was making sure she knew where to find me.

I straightened the borrowed tie as Sam and I got out of my SUV and walked to the Vital Health Insurance building.

"So, this kind of thing usually works?" I asked.

He shrugged. "You'd be amazed how seldom people question what they're told," he said. He didn't sound particularly proud of this fact. "Besides, we don't actually have to _do_ anything. We just have to hope this car of yours sees us."

We entered the building, and Sam went up to the information desk, charming smile in place. I wondered if he knew how big a part his looks played in letting him get away with impersonating FBI agents and insurance reps. Probably not. I hadn't really been aware of it myself until it stopped working quite so often. I hung back, so I missed what he asked the receptionist, who smiled back and pointed down a hallway.

"Well?" I asked, when he returned.

"Bathroom's down that way."

Killing half an hour in a building you've got no business being in is harder than it looks. I'd suggested earlier just hanging around outside, but they seemed pretty set on looking like we were actually investigating. Didn't want to be too obvious about setting a trap. Personally I wondered if they weren't just a little too fond of the dressing up and pretending part, but hey, they were the pros. Who was I to argue?

We did hang around outside for an hour or so, eating hot dogs from a nearby cart and trying to look like we were having a real conversation. Sam didn't know much about baseball, but he'd apparently followed football in college, so we talked about that for a bit. It was kind of awkward: I'd stopped following college ball once my chances for playing were gone, and it sounded like he'd done it more to fit in than out of genuine interest, but it was something to talk about besides demons.

"If she hasn't seen you by now," Sam said as we got back into my SUV, "she won't see you here at all. Just…drive slowly."

"Actually, I thought I'd speed around a few corners, maybe," I replied.

I was checked into an AmeriSuites two exits down the interstate from our back road. It was a nicer place than I'd typically use, but close enough that we could avoid traffic when things finally went down. I'd left my stuff back at the other motel, though; if this didn't work, no way was I going back to the one place where Christine could find me.

We'd also plotted as simple a course as possible. Still, in a city that seemed to embrace "if one curve is good, two curves are better" as a guiding principle of road design, simple was a relative matter. Almost to the hotel with no sign of Christine, I was beginning to think I'd have to spend another day handing around Vital's building when Sam looked into the passenger side mirror.

"I'd say we got her attention."

I looked in the rearview. Sure enough, there was a flash of white and Autumn Red three cars back.

She followed us off the exit and even down the access road toward the hotel, but stopped in the parking lot of the Big Boy next door and sat there, idling, while we parked. I made sure to park in her view and turned to face her as I exited the SUV I felt a little silly standing there, dramatically staring like the hero in a bad movie, but I thought of Leigh's daughters in New Mexico, growing up without their mother; I thought of George LeBay's sister in Colorado, dead of a stroke the week after her brother was run down, a stroke almost certainly brought on by terror; I thought about all the things Ellie would never do; and I thought about Arnie, and the ant farms we'd made together.

I thought about finally, forever, putting this bitch down.

"That's, um, probably enough," Sam said, with the tone of someone who knows full well he's interrupting a dramatic moment and wishes he didn't have to.

I shook my head to clear it. "Right." We started toward the hotel.

"We should probably get some sleep," Sam said. "Big night."

I nodded again, but really, I could only wonder if he actually expected me to get any sleep.

The scary thing was, he _did_ manage to sleep, collapsed on the room's extra bed, not even waking up when I finally gave up around 9:00 p.m. and turned on the TV. One thing I'll give nice hotels (well, besides the clean sheets, reliable hot water, and lack of bugs): their cable system is better. I even managed to find a rerun of an earlier Phillies game. Reruns of sports. I tried to imagine my grandfather's reaction to that. Hell, he probably would have loved it if it meant he got to watch the Phillies every day.

The alarm, which I'd forgotten I'd set, went off uselessly at 1:30 a.m., and Sam sat up a bit blearily. I handed him a cup of the coffee I'd made half an hour earlier.

"Huh," he said. "That explains the dream I was having about a haunted Starbucks."

I shook my head. "Your life is way more interesting than mine, and that's saying something."

He took a swig of coffee. "Speaking of," he said, "if this works tonight, what comes after? For you, I mean."

I must have been silent for longer than I realized, because he added, "You don't have to talk about it if--"

"No, it's okay," I said. "I just…don't really know. I used be a high school teacher, but my certification expired, God, twenty years ago." I'd kept it up the first few years, thinking I'd go back as soon as I was done, but after I managed to drive Christine into an industrial furnace, only to have her reappear the next day, I'd given up any idea of returning to my old life. "I suppose I could go back to school for a couple semesters, get it current, but then I'd have to explain that two decades on job interviews. Otherwise, I've done some road construction here and there, but…I really don't know. Something, I guess."

I've gotten pretty good at reading people of the years, but I couldn't decipher his expression.

Anyway, it was time to go.

Christine was nowhere to be seen as we pulled out of the hotel, or even onto the interstate, but I wasn't worried. I knew she'd show up.

"Are you sure she'll come?" Sam asked as I pulled off at the designated exit. I nodded toward the rearview mirror, and Sam turned to look behind us. "Guess so."

I turned right and followed the road as it became more and more deserted, leading from sparse suburbs to more of a farm area, the kind of area you know will start turning into planned communities in a few years, but for now was nearly pitch black. At least it would have been were it not for the glare of Christine's headlights.

"Hang on," I said as I prepared to floor it.

"Yeah, figured that part out myself," Sam replied.

When I'd bought this SUV two years ago, it had been billed as top of the line, guaranteed tough, fast, and maneuverable. I shouldn't have had to work so hard to keep a few feet ahead of a 1958 Plymouth Fury.

Then again, the demon might have something to do with that.

"Holy…" Sam jerked forward as Christine made contact with my back bumper. "Déjà vu."

"You get used to it," I assured him.

The spot we'd chosen was about fifteen miles from the interstate, just long enough for me to worry about getting there in one piece, but soon enough the road began to dip, and the overpass appeared up ahead.

"I really hope your brother's ready."

"He's ready," was the only assurance I got, but I believed it.

We sailed under the bridge so fast it was a blur, and I had almost rounded another curve before an enraged shriek of tires and the sound of metal straining against metal reached my ears. I said a quick prayer and slammed on the brakes before we got entirely out of sight of the overpass.

Christine was still under the bridge, tires spinning furiously.

Another set of lights appeared, and I saw Dean getting out of his car and approaching Christine as I shoved my SUV into reverse and started back.

He was already reading from a book, rosary beads in hand, by the time we got out to join him.

" Ergo draco maledicte …"

My college Latin was too far in the past to keep up, but from the way Christine was rocking and straining against whatever was holding her in place, it was working. I looked up and saw a complex symbol painted on the old bridge, which pretty much answered what Dean had been doing all day. I wondered briefly how he'd managed, but from what I'd seen so far, it didn't surprise me.

"_Benedictus Deus, gloria Patri_," Dean said in a clear tone of finality. He closed the book, and both he and Sam stepped back as Christine went utterly still, her engine sputtering out.

Several long seconds passed, and were it not for the puzzled expressions on their faces, I would have thought that was it.

"Shouldn't it…" Sam said, making a vague hand gesture that must have made some sense to Dean.

"Yeah, it should."

"Should what?" I asked.

"Should be barfing up black stuff," Dean answered. "Or whatever the car equivalent is, maybe…"

But whatever he thought should be happening was cut off by Christine's engine roaring to life.

Her tires screamed again, this time finding purchase, and she surged forward to slam into my SUV.

"What the…" Dean started, then he grabbed his brother's jacket sleeve. "Moving, moving!" he shouted.

They scrambled off the road to one side and I went to other as Christine lurched backward toward us. I gave brief thanks for the roadside ditches and hoped they'd be enough to stop her, but I didn't need to worry. Christine pulled back just far enough to gather speed, then started forward again, putting a large dent in the SUV and smashing her own headlights as she pushed it out of her way. By the time she turned the curve, her lights were back on.

I walked back to the road, looking at the complicated symbols; Sam and Dean were doing the same. They looked at each other again, and although I pretty much knew what they were thinking, Dean was thoughtful enough to vocalize it.

"Son of a _bitch_."


	3. Dean: MidWest Hunter Stories

"So, I've been thinking," Dean said as Sam handed him a cup of coffee grabbed from the Dunkin' Donuts across the street. Dean hadn't been thrilled about Sam going out, even though they were pretty sure that Christine was off licking her wounds for a while. But Sam never had developed a taste for motel room coffee and insisted on going.

It was a measure of how tired Sammy was that he let the line slide. Dean made a mental note to give him shit about it later.

Dennis Guilder was probably still asleep in the adjoining room. They'd limped, literally and figuratively, to a cheap hotel on a random interstate exit, although none of them really expected Christine to follow at this point. Dennis had looked pretty much the way you'd expect someone to look who'd had the hope that a twenty-plus year quest was finally over dashed before his eyes. He'd summoned just enough energy to insist on second floor rooms, something he'd apparently learned when Christine had crashed right through the wall of a Motel 6 in Topeka.

"It's obvious we're not dealing with a demon, here," Dean continued, "at least not a regular one."

Sam let out a little chuff of air, and okay, Dean had to admit that their lives were pretty weird when they started talking about "regular" demons.

"And it's not a haunting or possession, or it would have stopped when Dennis burned that LeBay guy's bones. Unless he did the wrong ones, and it seems like he'd make damn sure he didn't."

"Right," Sam said.

"So, I got to thinking about the truck in Cape Girardeau and the way it kept coming even after we got rid of Cyrus."

"But that was the truck's ghost, not the truck itself," Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, but see, it still shouldn't have been able to do that. Non-living things don't leave ghosts behind. And this whole thing with Christine made me wonder: maybe the reason it could is that Cyrus, I dunno, gave it a personality or something. I mean, people get attached to places, houses and stuff like that, but they usually don't give them names, not people names like, well, Christine. They don't--" He snapped his fingers at Sam. "Fancy word," he said.

"Anthropomorphize?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, that. They don't make houses male or female, don't talk to them, have, you know, relationships with them. People do that with cars." Dean took a long swallow of his coffee. He knew he was onto something, he just wasn't entirely sure what.

"Boats, too," Sam said slowly.

"Huh?"

"People do the same thing with boats. Give them names, personalities, get attached to them like they're companions."

"Right," Dean said, "And there's all _kinds_ of stories of ghost boats and stuff that aren't tied to a particular person. Maybe we just haven't heard much about cars because there hasn't been time for the lore to develop. Which kind of screws us." No lore meant no existing solutions.

"Well, really," Sam said, "it all goes back to the horse, the faithful companion." He frowned in what Dean had come to recognize as Sam's college face, the studious mask of someone putting information together. It wasn't like Sam hadn't done that _before_. but even Dean had to admit he'd come back from Stanford with a little bit of useful knowledge.

"What?" he said.

"Horse," Sam answered, reaching across the bed for his laptop and beginning to type furiously. He looked up. "I think I might remember something, a story I heard in--"

Dean waved his hand. "You can skip the thought process," he said. "I trust you."

Sam might have blushed a little at that. Dean let it slide. Just this once.

~~~

"A hell steed?" Dennis asked in the clear tones of someone who thought he'd heard it all and wasn't quite prepared to admit he might be wrong.

"Something like that," Dean said.

"No offense, guys, but three days ago you were sure this was a demon."

Dean pushed down his instinctive irritation. Well, mostly, anyway. "Look, I know the other hunters you've run into have bailed on this, but we're not going to. We're…" He looked at Sam. "We're not on some all-consuming quest. At the moment," he added. Which was true enough. The colt was long gone, and whatever leads they had on old Yellow Eyes were cold at the moment. And if there was still the lingering question of Sam's future, Dean was only too happy to have something else to think about. "We're on this job, now, and we don't leave jobs until they're done."

Guilder looked at him for a long moment, and if Dean thought he saw the tiniest bit of indulgence in his face, the kind Dad sometimes (well, almost never, but sometimes) got when Dean insisted he could help, he chose to ignore it.

"Okay. Explain," Dennis said.

Sam turned his laptop screen to face Dennis. "In 1703, in a small village in England, this guy named Richard Draper, son of a local landowner, was found dead at the bottom of a ravine. Apparently, Richard's idea of a good time was to ride his horse on back roads at night and terrorize any of the villagers who happened to be out."

"In other words," Dean put in, "he was the same kind of charming guy as your friend LeBay."

"LeBay wasn't my friend," Dennis responded sharply. Dean made a quick 'peace, man' gesture. Sore point. Got it.

"Anyway," Sam went on, "Four days before he was found dead, he supposedly killed a little boy. Rather, the horse did by kicking the boy to death, which I'm guessing is when the village decided they'd had enough. Anyway, the horse supposedly disappeared at the same time, but then a few weeks later it showed up on the roads again, all by itself, this time deliberately killing. A few of the men managed to trap it and kill it, but it just showed up again."

Dean looked at Dennis. "Sound familiar?"

"A little. So, it was what, a ghost? A demon?"

"Something like that," Dean said. "Kind of somewhere in between, maybe." Oh, yeah, this _totally_ sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Dennis's expression was still skeptical.

Sam must have thought the same thing, because he went in for the kill. "Did I mention the horse's name was Christienne?"

Okay, that got Dennis's attention. "So, what happened?"

"Draper's father killed himself, and the village sort of…dried up. Our guess is that the horse, or whatever was driving it, sort of...moved on. I found a handful of cases after that, all involving some kind of transportation: a train in India, a boat on Lake Huron, a helicopter in Vietnam… Actually, I wasn't sure about that one." He pulled up a picture of a helicopter, five men in dirty camo standing in front of it. The copter had "Christie" painted messily on the side.

"Just before the fall of Saigon, an Army pilot named Doug Bell was court-martialed for shooting up a village against orders. He killed himself in prison, but the copter disappeared, and there were stories of it attacking several villages. It was shot down over the jungle just as the last troops pulled out, but I don't know if that was the end of it or not. It sounds like our…thing, but that would have overlapped with the car."

Dennis frowned. "Maybe not," he said slowly, still looking at the picture. "When Arnie bought Christine, it looked like she'd been sitting on LeBay's lawn for a while, and he hadn't been taking care of her or driving her very often for a number of years before that. If LeBay wasn't driving her, wasn't causing death or misery with her, maybe this," he paused and sort of rolled his eyes, as if he couldn't believe what he was saying, "hell steed found another vessel."

"And then went back to the car when your friend bought it," Dean said. Dennis was still staring at the picture of the copter, and Dean could almost see the wheels turning in his head, wondering how close his friend had come to escaping the crap hand he'd been dealt. "Anyway, we're guessing these previous cases explain some of the patterns of killings you saw that weren't immediately tied to Christine. Sounds like this thing has been accumulating grudges for a long time."

"It also might explain why she seems to latch onto new owners every so often," Sam said. "You know, horse, domesticated horse, probably only capable of so much independence."

Dennis took a deep breath and seemed to compose himself. "So, what's the bad news? Besides the fact that Christine may very well have left town and we have no way of knowing where she's gone?"

"Actually, we've got somebody on that." Dean wasn't all that comfortable having called Ash; he hated relying on anyone but Sam and Dad as much as they were starting to rely on Ellen and her motley little crew. But the truth was, Ash could not only track police reports better than they could, he had the means to plant the kind of information that would get police _watching_ for Christine. Watching, but not approaching.

"The bad news is, we're not entirely sure how to destroy it," Sam admitted.

"As near as we can tell, it only moves on when the form it's in isn't useful anymore," Dean said. "The train in India ran on a track system that went defunct. The boat popped up here and there for about ten years on Lake Huron, ramming into passenger ferries to Mackinac Island, until boats started getting bigger and stronger than it. There's one last story of it trying and failing to sink a ferry, and then no more. The helicopter was stuck in a country the people it wanted to kill were leaving. The problem with your car…"

"…is that for all the improvements in new cars, they're not any stronger," Dennis finished. "In fact, just the opposite."

Dean nodded. "Granted, she's a little conspicuous, but weigh that against being able to smash a Neon to pieces."

"So there's nothing, no ritual or…whatever it is you guys do?" Dennis asked. His tone wasn't desperate, just resigned.

"We're working on it," Sam replied. "There's all kinds of stories of demonic horses, so there's got to be something somewhere. We just have to find it."

Dennis was silent for a long moment. "Okay," he finally said. "It's been a long time since I've seen the inside of a card catalog. Where do we start?"

Sam and Dean looked at each other. "Well, first," Sam said, "not with a card catalog."

~~~

The card catalog comment turned out to be something of a joke, because Dennis proved pretty handy with a search engine, and even handier with a library database. Three hours in the downtown public library and they'd gathered a handful of stories about demon horses, spectral horses, ghost horses, pretty much anything they thought might be useful. Mostly, it wasn't.

"Okay, might have something here," Sam said, rifling through the pile of photocopied pages they'd brought to a nearby diner, this being the kind of task that definitely called for pie. "In 1850, Bethany, Wyoming, the town bully was hanged by a mob, and his horse was put down when it nearly killed its new owner. Then the horse started showing up at night, going after the people who hung the bully."

"Sounds familiar," Dennis said.

"Yeah, but in this case, the town doctor, Tobias Kimble, was a former seminary student, and somehow he managed to destroy the thing, apparently using some ritual to summon a..." Sam kind of waved a hand, "… non-hell steed." There really weren't many terms for _good_ supernatural things, which Dean thought ought to be a clue. "It did, quote, righteous battle, unquote, with the hell steed and destroyed it."

"Great," Dean said, leaning forward. "So, what's the ritual?"

Sam paged through the sheets of information. "Not here." He read a little more closely. "It sounds like a lot of this information is taken from a journal Kimble kept, though. Maybe if we could get our hands on that, it would have the ritual."

"Let me see," Dennis held out his hand. He scanned the pages. "Okay, look, here, " he pointed at a footnote. "Kimble's diary is kept at the Southern Wyoming Historical Society. In…Wyoming. Which is a not-inconsiderable drive." He frowned, then snapped his fingers, pulling out a cell phone. He started to dial, then looked at Sam and Dean. "Um…be right back."

He walked outside to make his phone call.

Dean looked at Sam. "Girlfriend in Wyoming?"

"He said he used to be a history teacher," Sam said. "Maybe he knows somebody."

Sure enough, in a few minutes Dennis slid back into the booth, announcing, "Okay, might have a lead. Someone's looking into it for us."

Dean thought about pushing him, but hell, he could understand wanting to keep contacts as far away from this crap as possible. "So," he said, "now's the part I really hate."

"What's that?" Dennis asked.

"Now we wait."

~~~

"Okay, we have a choice of burgers or…burgers." Dean peered into the fast food bag. Even he had to admit that it wasn't the best choice of lunch. After three days and no sign of Christine, they were getting bolder about going out, but they still tried to keep time not spent in a nice, sturdy building to a minimum. That meant a lot of delivery pizza and off-peak drive throughs.

He was greeted with silence.

"Hey, Dean, thanks for risking your butt to go get lunch," he said. "Ah, no problem. I laugh at danger."

Still nothing. Sam and Dennis were both staring intently at Sam's laptop.

"You got something?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Sam said absently. Dean considered acting offended, but if Sammy was this focused, odds were good he was onto something.

"What do you got?" he asked instead.

"Well, we're kind of back to good news and bad news," Sam replied.

"Hit me."

"The good news is, we got the ritual," Sam said.

"The Southern Wyoming Historical Society is planning a major web site," Dennis added. "Nothing actually up yet, but they've scanned a good chunk of their original documents." He paused for a moment, then shrugged as if to say, 'what the hell.' "An old professor of mine specializes in that general area, so she was able to get an advance copy and email it to me."

"That's great." Dean walked over to look at Sam's screen. Sure enough, there was a scan of a handwritten journal there, with a page written mostly in Latin. He recognized some of the phrases, but not all of them, and the order was unfamiliar. He tapped the screen. "_Similis_ what?"

"Like will destroy like," Sam answered. "Probably means the spectral horse."

"Okay, this doesn't look too hard. Trap the hell steed..."

"Which should be all kinds of easy," Dennis said dryly.

Dean shrugged a concession, but truthfully, they'd had tougher gigs. Okay, not _much_ tougher, but tougher. "So, trap it, say the ritual, and…?" He hit "page down" on Sammy's laptop.

"…town have agreed never to speak of this, but already the stories begin to spread," he read. "Huh?"

"That's the bad news," Sam said. "There's a page missing, so we don't know exactly what happens. I mean, we know the general idea, but not the specifics, and we don't know if we have to do anything _else_."

Dean nodded. "Okay, that's bad. Any chance there's another source we can check?"

Dennis shook his head. "Not that we know of. I went over the articles, and Kimble's journal is the only primary source listed. The rest is just folklore."

"Great." Dean sat down on one of the beds, running through possible sources of information. Ash was good at what he did, but he wasn't necessarily any better at this kind of research than they were. Odds were good that if it could be found in cyberspace, they'd have found it already. Dean took a moment to hate on old Yellow Eyes an extra special bit for wiping out most of Dad's contacts, at least the ones they knew about. Maybe it was cold to think of their dead friends in terms of lost resources, but he had a feeling most of them would approve. At least Dad would.

So that left…

"Bobby might know something," Sam said.

Dean nodded. "Worth a phone call, anyway."

Dennis cleared his throat, and Dean just _knew_ he was going to bring up the question they'd rather not answer.

"What if he doesn't?" Sure enough, there it was. "What do we do?"

The silence stretched out. Dean was pretty sure he and Sam were thinking the same thing, but neither really wanted to say it.

Sam cracked first. "I think we have to try it anyway," he said.

Dennis seemed to take it well. "Are you sure that's wise?"

"Probably not," Dean said. "But I think we're running kind of slim on choices, here. I mean, best case, we spend a little while longer chasing her, and in the meantime, I'm guessing she's pretty pissed off at us for what we did to her."

"Probably," Dennis admitted.

"Yeah, well, I don't know about you, but I've…" Dean swallowed. He was going to say that he'd had enough car-related near-death experiences lately, but somehow, he wasn't quite ready to joke about that one. "I'd rather not have a pissed-off Plymouth looking to turn me into road kill," he said. "And worst case, maybe the hell steed decides it's time to trade up bodies again. I mean, never mind us: sooner or later, the cops or the feds or _somebody_ is going to trip to her. This isn't like 1978; shit like this gets around. So I'd say we gotta take the chance."

There was another silence as Dennis seemed to consider this. "So…more waiting?" he said.

"Phone call first, but yeah, More waiting."

~~~

"Three twenty a gallon," Dean muttered as he replaced the gas pump. "Damn criminal is what it is." Not that he was actually _paying_ for it, but still.

They'd called Bobby the day before, and while he was pretty sure he might know someone who had heard something (God, Dean loved this business), it was going to take him time to track it down. In the meantime, they were all going a little stir crazy. Since they were increasingly sure that Christine had taken off (Ash hadn't found her, but it was really only a matter of time; a car that big couldn't hide forever), they decided to go on a supply run. If nothing else, Dean wanted to make sure they were gassed up and ready to go. And anyway, they were running low on rock salt.

Which was how he ended up outside a Super Wal-Mart at one on the morning, waiting for Sammy, wondering idly if the guy who'd founded Wal-Mart had made some kind of a deal with a crossroads demon. when his cell phone rang. The caller ID said Buddy Holly, which just went to show that Ash shared his philosophy of aliases.

"Hit me," he answered.

"Yeah, Dean," Ash drawled in that voice that always sounded like he was either just waking up from a nap or really needed to take one, "Got a hit on that car of yours."

"Okay, where?" Dean was already mentally packing his bags, wondering if Dennis's SUV could make anything resembling a long trip. It wasn't exactly toast. It was still mobile, and maybe in good enough shape for a confrontation, but it was the kind of messed up that would draw law enforcement attention on the street. Still, when they'd briefly considered leaving the SUV behind at the site of the failed exorcism, Guilder had gotten a pained look that made Dean abandon the argument. Funny, the guy didn't seem the type to get attached to cars, all things considered, especially not one he'd only had a couple of years. But if there's one thing Dean had learned, it's that you just never knew when it came to people. So maybe they could chance it.

"A Hamilton County deputy just spotted it."

"Wait, Hamilton County?" Dean interrupted. "Like, _here_, Hamilton County?"

"Yeah, it was on Colerain Avenue, near the freeway."

Dean cut off the call, looking around even as he hit Sam's number on the speed dial.

"Yeah?" Sam answered.

"Get--" Dean stopped, halfway into the Impala. There, on the other end of the parking lot, starkly visible in the nearly empty expanse, was a red and white Plymouth Fury.

"Get to the front of the store, now," Dean said, turning the ignition. "But don't come out until you see me. Then run like hell."

Sam didn't argue, didn't even ask. He just hung up.

Dean gunned the accelerator, pulling out rapidly, to the protests of the car pulling in. "You'd thank me if you knew," he muttered. At least the place wasn't that crowded this time of night, which was the reason they'd come at this time in the first place. He gave about three seconds thought to leaving Sam and trying to lead Christine away, but given everything Dennis had told him, even if she was pissed at Dean, she was just as likely to stay behind and go after Sammy, who'd be left on foot against a two-ton car.

He was almost to the entrance before he saw Christine moving, or rather heard screaming tires and turned to see her racing him to the doors.

"Crap, crap, crap," he said. "Sam, I hope you're ready."

Sam, God love him, was in fact ready and had the Impala's passenger door halfway open before Dean was even to a full stop. Which was good, because that let Dean swerve down a lane just as Christine pulled out of hers. Still, she was almost on them by the time they got to the light leading out onto the street.

"She seem pretty pissed off to you?" Dean asked.

"Uh-huh."

"Yeah, me too." Dean tossed his cell at Sam. "Last call was from Ash. Call him back. We need to do this now."

He expected Sam to argue, to protest moving ahead with no information, but Sam just hit the call button.

"Yeah, Ash? Sam. Can you get a location on this phone? Good, do it."

Dean swerved onto the freeway on-ramp. Even at this time of night, there were cars there, which made it risky, but the side streets were worse, and he didn't think they could afford to get caught on a back road this time.

"Okay, great," Sam was saying, "Now I need you to find me something."


	4. Dennis: MidWest Death Stories

When Sam called, I was reading a book on cowboy ghost stories I'd grabbed from the library. I hadn't been all that thrilled about them going out in the middle of the night, but even if Christine weren't gone, it was probably better for whatever happened to happen when there _weren’t_ several hundred people in the Wal-Mart parking lot. It's not like I hadn't thought the same thing a dozen times over the years.

Still, my stomach took a little jump when my cell phone rang. There are only a few people who even have that number, and my mother seldom calls -- I suspect it's because wondering what's happened if I don't pick up is unbearable for her -- so the odds of the call being anyone else were slim.

"Dennis," Sam said without even waiting for my hello, "we need you to get somewhere fast, and bring the ritual with you. The place isn't far from the motel, but we don't have a lot of time."

"Wait," I said, "we're doing this now? Have you heard from your friend?"

"No, but we kind of don't have much choice here." A squeal of tires and a muffled curse told me pretty much everything I needed to know. "You got a pen?"

"Hit me." The directions were short and to the point, and I was on my way out the door before he finished. I took five seconds to grab a shotgun out of the well in the back of the SUV. It probably wouldn't do much good, but it couldn't hurt.

The directions Sam gave me took me out of the little run-down commercial area we were staying in and into an equally run-down industrial area filled with large structures that were either abandoned or looked that way. I drove as fast as I could without risking bringing a few cop cars along with me. I very deliberately didn't think about where I was going, or about the printed out paged of Tobias Kimble's journal next to me. I wasn't going to get my hopes up again. This was just one more showdown, one more attempt to keep Christine from killing someone, in this case, a couple of kids who were stupid enough to think they could help me.

I took the final turn, and I had about three seconds to take in Dean's car playing chicken with Christine in the middle of a long, narrow parking lot. The lot appeared to be bound in by concrete barriers, and the Impala was headed back out of the lot, barreling down on Christine, who was headed in.

Dean swerved at the last minute, his car scraping against Christine as they passed each other. He moved toward the exit, and I went for the entrance, making a sharp turn to park my SUV across it, blocking the way as best I could. I was already out of my car when Dean did the same at the exit.

Christine had reached the other end of the parking lot and turned around. She was sitting there, idling, as if gathering her anger before attacking. Sam and Dean got out of their car, and I tossed Sam the print-out.

"Start reading," I said, grabbing my shotgun and starting toward Christine.

"Dean," I heard Sam say.

"Yeah, I know," Dean answered, and I heard the Impala's trunk slam shut. "I’m telling you right now, this bitch hurts my car, I’ll do more than just send her to hell."

A second later, Dean was at my side, carrying a shotgun much like my own.

"You know, for the record," he said, chambering a round, "getting yourself killed in the process here isn't going to do anyone much good."

I only glanced at him for a second; Christine's engine was revving, and I knew I couldn't spare much more. But even that second told me that there was a very long story behind his carefully blank expression, and I almost wished I had time to hear it. Not that he probably would have told me anyway.

"_In nomine Patris, et Filii_," Sam began behind us just as Christine finally moved toward us.

"You ready?" I asked.

"Born ready," Dean said. "Well, not really, but close enough." He took aim and fired.

His shot hit the windshield, shattering glass into a million pieces. She didn't even slow down. I took my shot, hitting a tire. It caused her to swerve, but not stop.

"_Similis mos attero similes_," Sam continued, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the rim scraping the concrete. The sound made me think of Arnie, of the way he'd been ready to take on a man capable of turning his face into pulp rather than drive his precious new car even a few feet on the rim. I fired again, taking out the other tire seconds before we both had to hurl ourselves out of her way.

Christine swerved again, coming so close I could feel the heat of her metal, then skidded across the lot to crash into the concrete barriers. I could barely hear Sam's voice, not enough to make out what he was saying, but enough to hear the finality in his tone as he said the last words of the ritual.

Dean was already back on his feet and moving to help me up. My knee was throbbing, and as I saw Christine's windshield repairing itself, saw her tires start to reinflate, I knew I wouldn't get out of the lot before she got to me. I hoped Dean was smart enough to leave me, but I was pretty sure he wasn't.

"Please let this work," I said to whomever might be listening.

It was Dean who answered. "This spectral horse had better be one bad ass pony."

"Assuming that’s what--" I stopped at the rumble of an engine, only it wasn’t coming from our left, where Christine was repairing herself. It was coming from behind us.

The Impala's engine roared to life, and her headlights flooded the area. The words of the ritual came back to me. "Like will destroy like."

"Oh, no," Dean said. "Oh no, no, no, no, _no_. Not my car!"

He started forward, and I grabbed his jacket to hold him back. The Impala was already pulling out, already starting a run down the parking lot aisle that couldn’t have been more obviously to get room for a ramming run than if there’d been a cheesy voiceover.

"I don't think we can stop it," I said, pulling him to the other side of the lot.

Christine finished repairing herself and pulled away from the concrete barriers, but then she just sat for a minute, as if looking back and forth from the now-clear exit to the Impala, her anger battling her self-preservation.

She turned toward the Impala. Anger had won.

"Ah, _shit_," Dean said.

The smell of burning rubber filled the air as they raced toward each other.

"I can't look," Dean said. "Tell me what's happening."

The cars were pulling apart, both racing back in reverse, both dented and damaged, but it looked like Christine was in worse shape.

"I think," I said, almost not daring to voice it, "I think we're winning."

Dean opened his eyes. He looked at his car, smiling in obvious pride, so much like Arnie's pride in Christine, but _cleaner_ somehow.

"You get her, baby!" he yelled.

The Impala and Christine sped toward each other again, and again slammed together. They strained against each others’ momentum for a few long seconds, and then Christine seemed to lose traction, moving backwards as the Impala pushed her toward the concrete barriers. She hit them with a crunch that made me wince.

The Impala pulled back again, this time to the right, and before Christine could recover, it slammed into her side again, pushing her along the barrier away from us. It swerved to crash Christine into the barriers one last time, then pulled back to the middle of the lot and sat idling, waiting. Christine’s engine sputtered defiantly for a few more seconds, then died.

Dean looked at me for a minute, and then handed me his shotgun. I took it without a word, aimed, and fired.

Christine exploded in a ball of bright fire. Beside me, Dean ducked, but I took the heat against my face, the glare in my eyes, and savored every second of it. Over the sounds of the explosion, I could hear the outraged shriek of metal turning into the angry screams of a horse.

And then there was nothing but silence.

The flames died almost as quickly as they'd ignited, and what was left was a crumbling husk, as if time were finally catching up to her, time and all the injuries inflicted over the years. I watched her collapse into so much dust.

The familiar sound of metal dents repairing themselves filled the silence,   
For a moment I felt the kind of despair I thought I'd lost the capacity for years ago, and then I realized it wasn't coming from Christine. Several feet away, the Impala’s crushed door repaired itself with a metallic screech, and the windshield made a cracking sound as the glass filled back in. A minute later the engine turned off, and the car sat there, looking as good as it had the night I'd first seen it in the bar parking lot.

Dean approached her slowly. He turned to Sam, who was now a few feet away. "Do you think…?" he asked.

"Not sure," Sam said. "Probably." I assumed they understood each other.

Dean nodded and put his hand on the hood of his car. "I feel like I should say something."

"Good job?" Sam suggested in the clear tones of someone who expects to be called stupid.

But Dean just nodded again and patted the hood of his car. "Good job," he said. And then promptly turned and hit his brother in the arm.

"What was that for?" Sam demanded.

"My car! You sent my car against a fuckin' hell steed!"

"I didn't know!"

I tuned out their argument and looked at what remained of Christine. The rusty dust was already blowing away in the slight breeze.

"Rest in peace, Arnie."

~~~

I had every intention of getting all of us coffee the next morning. I figured it was the least I could do, all things considered. I did not, however, count on falling into what might as well have been a coma for twelve hours. So I went for beer at two in the afternoon, instead. I didn't think they'd mind.

Sam was hanging up his cell phone when I got to their room. He looked at it like it might start talking to him. Hell, given their lives, maybe it would.

"That was Bobby," Sam said.

"Yeah, kinda figured," Dean said. "What’d he have to say?"

"He found the information about the incident in Wyoming." Sam made a face. "Apparently, Kimble’s ritual didn’t summon a spectral horse. It gave _his_ horse the same powers as the hell steed so it could defeat it."

Dean snorted. "That? Would have been really good to know twenty-four hours ago." He took the beer I was holding out to him.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. In books, the hero who achieves his epic goal always magically looks twenty years younger, walks straighter and taller, looks as if the weight of the world is gone from his shoulders. I still had the gray hair, still looked older than my years; my knee still ached like a son of bitch, and my back was stiff in a way that called for Bengay and possibly a heating pad.

I didn't feel any magical surge of energy. I just felt like a man who'd had the first good night's sleep he'd had in two decades.

Dean was looking at me speculatively. I'd seen that look before from other hunters, usually right before they pointed out to me that my haunted car might not be here, but hey, there was this handy vengeful spirit that needed killing. It would be easy in some ways to do that, just go on to the next bad thing, fall into the life. Easier, maybe, than figuring out what to do next.

Dean looked at Sam for a moment, then shook his head, more at himself than either of us. "So," he said. "You might want to look into getting that tank fixed before you head out. Doubt it's going to get you very far."

"Honestly, I'll probably just junk it," I said. "Never did like driving something that big."

"Where will you go now?" Sam asked.

I pondered for a minute. "Florida." I owed my Mom a visit. Owed her the peace of knowing it was over. "Maybe see if I can learn to sail."

Sam nodded. "Good luck." He held out his hand.

"You, too." I shook his hand. "Be safe," I said, turning to Dean.

"No such thing," he answered, shaking my hand.

"Probably not."

We stood looking at each other for a long moment.

"Ah, hell," Dean said. "We got time for one more beer."

I grinned. "True. Maybe dinner."

"Sounds like a plan. There's this great place near where you, you know…"

"Saved our asses," Sam finished.

"Right," Dean said. "Giant chicken on the roof, you can't miss it."

Sam snorted, and Dean ducked his head, grinning. I thought of Arnie again, of when he and I had been like that, just giving each other shit and knowing it meant love. For the first time in years, the memories didn't hurt.

The End


End file.
